


Reconnection

by emily4498



Category: Ceremony - Leslie Marmon Silko
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 16:04:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18055643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emily4498/pseuds/emily4498
Summary: Betonie's perspective when Tayo come to him for answers.





	Reconnection

  _All dialogue is copied from_ Ceremony _by Leslie Marmon Silko, pages 108-111._

Betonie saw them coming long before they could see his hogan. He could feel them long before he saw them. While visitors were a usual occurrence, he still knew exactly what they came for. They walked with uncertainty in their steps, almost staggering, but not with drunkenness—although they both looked as though they had their fair share of that as well. They watched carefully where they placed their feet, but still stumbled over the ripples of heat rising from the sand. They picked around the weeds desperately and futilely trying to reclaim the road, but still, the scraggly creatures were crushed under their boots.

One of them didn’t care. He was sure of himself, his identity was no longer entirely Navajo. He didn’t care how lost he was and reveled in the aimless, circling paths the white people’s drink led him. Not even the sight of Betonie sitting and watching them as they approached could phase him. He acknowledged the man’s existence, but beyond that, Betonie couldn’t be sure. Betonie ignored him in favor of the other man.

He was clearly the reason for the visit. It was funny how those soldiers—Betonie could tell they were soldiers by the way they walked in step, shoulder-to-shoulder, taking turns scanning everything around them—when they returned home, coming home was always the last thing on their minds. The other man, the man who was seeking him out, was tied up in so many unrecognizable knots that he was suffocating. He wasn’t remarkable—he had all his limbs; his clothes weren’t special—except for his green eyes that mirrored Betonie’s. He was just another face in the stream of faces Betonie had seen who were so lost, they didn’t even know where to start to find their way back.

At least he hadn’t yet lost his lucidity.  At least he didn’t want to be lost anymore—when Betonie looked closer, he noticed the man was scared to stay lost; he was scared to end up like the parade of equally lost souls he no doubt passed as he walked through Gallup.

“People ask me why I live here,” Betonie began once they stopped in front of him. He didn’t try to speak Dine to them. Those lost and wandering may have understood his words, but they would never have understood what he was saying. “I tell them I want to keep track of the people. ‘Why over here?’ they ask me. ‘because this is where Gallup keeps Indians until Ceremonial time. Then they want to show us off to the tourists.’” They may have seen it on their way, but he still pointed towards them with his chin, but he knew they didn’t _see_ it, not like he did. He couldn’t help but picture the scene in his minds eye as the man did the same. “They set up over there, in alleys between the bars. They keep us on the north side of the railroad tracks, next to the river and their dump. Where none of them want to live.” Betonie couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. “They don’t understand. We know these hills and we are comfortable here.”

Both men understood his statement.

“You know, at one time when my great-grandfather was young Navajos lived in all these-hills.” Betonie pointed as he spoke, but they didn’t look. “They had little farms along the river. When the railroads came and the white people began to build their town, the Navajos had to move.”

They didn’t share Betonie’s humor.

“It strikes me funny, people wondering why I live so close to this filthy town. But see, this hogan was here first. Built long before the white people ever came. It is that town down there which is out of place. not this old medicine man.”

The man’s friend who brought him here was done. He had fulfilled his responsibility. “I guess I’ll go now,” he muttered.

The man who was left behind wanted to run after him, no doubt hoping that he could find contentment while wandering like his friend.

“Go ahead, you can go.” Betonie urged him, but he knew the man wouldn’t leave. It would take more than his power to kill the man’s desperation. “Most of the Navajos feel the same way about me. You won’t be the first one to run away.” Many of them eventually made their way back in due time.

Once the man made eye contact with Betonie, seeing him far more clearly than before, he stood and invited him in.

“My grandmother was a remarkable Mexican with green eyes.” Betonie waited for him to enter and look around before speaking again. “The west side is built into the hill in the old-style way. Sand and dirt for a roof; just about halfway underground. You can feel it, can’t you?”

The man nodded, overwhelmed by the room and standing in the circle of sunlight like a man who hadn’t seen light in years and trying to take in everything at once. He could feel it, he could feel it all.

“Take it easy, don’t try to see everything all at once. We’ve been gathering these things for hundreds of years. She was doing it before I was born, and he was working before she came. And on and on back down in time.” For a moment, Betonie was equally caught up, hearing the many, many stories attached to every item in the hogan. “Talking like this is just as bad, isn’t it? Too big to swallow all at once.”

The man nodded as he swayed in place, still slowly turning in circles, breathing everything in. The longing he couldn’t quite name was beginning to fade as he began to _see_ exactly where he came from. Like a lodestone drawn north, he slowly stopped spinning, know where he was supposed to go. Even so, he wasn’t quite sure how to get there. They were ready to begin.

“And what do I make from all this? Maybe you smelled it when you came in.” Betonie let the cadence of storytelling take over. The best way to start was to tell where they were from. “In the old days, it was simple. A medicine person could get by without all these things. But nowadays…”


End file.
